


Letters From Home

by CapGirlCanuck



Series: FoxholeBros [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Afghanistan, Country Music, F/M, Gen, Letters from the homefront, Marvel's Band of Brothers, Pillow Fights, Sad and Happy, Soldiers, Title from a Country Song, War, World War I, World War II, pregnancy announcement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 03:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21403621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapGirlCanuck/pseuds/CapGirlCanuck
Summary: Across time three soldiers in three different places read three different letters.Some are happy, some are worried. And some will never be mailed.A Remembrance Day tribute, inspired by the song "Letters From Home" by John Michael Montgomery.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Winifred Barnes, Joseph Rogers/Sarah Rogers, Riley & Sam Wilson
Series: FoxholeBros [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1155404
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	Letters From Home

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very glad I was able to pull this together in time for Remembrance Day. (At least, it's still the 11th where I am.)  
A reminder of, not just the soldiers, but the ones who wait for them.  
Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Never forget to remember.

_December 17, 1917_

_Dearest love,_

_Couldn’t sleep for thinking about it, so I’m writing you now, sitting up in bed with a candle burning. My hand is trembling a wee bit. I know you won’t get this letter until after Christmas, likely the new Year, but I can’t help feeling like this is my real Christmas present to you. _

_You’re going to be a dad. Probably in the early summer. _

_I hardly know what else to write, because those sentences are all I can think about, and yet they hardly say a fraction of my thoughts. I will say that I miss you something terrible right now. How I wish we could celebrate this together. _

_Old Mrs. Gingerich told me I shouldn’t tell you, because it might be bad luck and jinx us all. Somehow, I cannot care what she says. I need you to know. I need you know so I can imagine you thinking about the babe as much as I do. Hoping and praying for it as much as I do. Loving him or her as much as I do already. _

_I am feeling tired, thanks to the extra hours I have been putting in at the hospital, but I am well and feel strong. _

_Annie McMahon says she will help me out whenever I need it. She is so excited for me, and I know she misses having wee ones around in her family, since her last sister moved out. I have had supper with the McMahons three nights this week, and they are too sweet to me. _

_Sometimes the newspapers make me worry, but then I remember what your grandmother used to say, “You can’t kill an Irishman, you can only send him on his way.”_

_Now that I’ve written this, I only want to send it shooting across the sea to you, which I can’t do at the wee hours of the morning, so I will put it in it’s envelope, seal it with a kiss, and sleep with it next to my heart. Where you always remain. _

_All my love,_

_Your Sarah_

“Rogers? Hey, Rogers, you alright?”

Master Sergeant Joseph Rogers couldn’t move, couldn’t answer. He only sat hunched under his greatcoat, reading and rereading Sarah’s letter, that line in the middle, over and over… Until it blurred.

With a trembling hand, he folded it and bowed his head, covering his eyes with one hand.

“Joseph?”

The voice was worried now, and a hand landed on his shoulder. “Joe, is something wrong?”

Joseph swallowed hard before he looked up, and then, as his eyes met the dark brown ones of his sergeant crouching beside him, the tide that had been rising inside him hit the surface.

“I’m to be a dad,” he blurted. “A dad!”

The laughter was uncontrollable, breaking out of him, as he threw his arms around George Barnes’s shoulders, and hugged the breath out of his friend.

George was laughing too, as he pulled back, keeping one arm around Joseph’s neck. “All the more reason to get out of this blasted war now, eh?”

“Hell, yeah!”

Joseph could not contain the smile that split his face, he knew he was grinning from ear to ear. He tipped his head back, stared up into the broken clouds. It was as if his heart was up there now, far above the dirt and wet and rats of a freezing cold trench, and the blood and guns and horror of a war.

A child. A babe. In the summer. A son? A daughter? Joseph didn’t think he cared. He just knew, right then, that he wanted his wife and his child to have the best life he could give them.

_Lord,_ he thought, still staring up at the sky. _Keep us all safe, please. Just let me make it home. Let George get home too, to his wife and son. Please, God. Please. _

Before he tucked the letter into his shirt, he kissed it, hoping the kiss would travel all the way across the ocean to a little apartment in Brooklyn.

† † † †

_Dear James and Steve,_

_It’s been cool the last few weeks, and some of the leaves are starting to turn colors. We’ve got more and more to harvest from the garden in the back. Becca and I spent all of yesterday canning the last of the corn, and next we’ve got beets and pickles coming. _

_I found myself sitting in the kitchen after lunch, after Jamie had gone down for a nap, and Becca had run off to another meeting and your father nodded off next to the radio, and it was as if I expected the door to open and you both to walk in. To walk in and laugh and be hungry and ask if Elizabeth has turned down another beau yet. _

_So even though I just wrote yesterday, I’m writing you again. _

_I made an apple cake yesterday, your favorite, Steve, though you know Frank enjoys it too. I don’t think he enjoyed it too well when poor Becca put salt instead of sugar in her cherry pie last week though! _

_We’re all proud of you boys, but I won’t have you coming home with big heads because they make comic books about you now. Come home safe, son. And, Steve, don’t forget you’re as welcome as sunshine in May with us. Take care of each other. _

_I pray for you often, as do we all. God watch over you._

_Your loving mother and Aunt Winnie_

Bucky fell silent, staring thoughtfully at the page in his hand. Steve looked up at his face, saw the way the soft light from the lantern hanging from the tent’s ridgepole highlighted the wistfulness there. “I can’t even remember the last time I had apple cake,” he said, mouth watering at the thought.

“She’s worried.” Bucky glanced up. “She only talks like this when she’s worried.”

Steve sighed, and sat up on his cot, swinging his feet to the floor. “Well, they won’t have heard much about us since Paris. We’ve been off the map a lot.”

Bucky nodded. “Let’s both write her tonight. Two letters at once would cheer her up.” He laughed suddenly. “Tell her about the can of beans you exploded. And exactly what Carter said to you about it.”

Steve threw his socks at Bucky, as the other man folded up the letter, tucking it inside his jacket. Bucky threw the socks back.

“Naw,” Steve said. “I’ll tell her how we almost left you behind in that one village because of that girl with the green eyes. What was her name again?”

Now it was Bucky’s turn to throw something.

The resulting pillow fight almost brought the tent down on their heads, until Dum-Dum came in and broke it up.

† † † †

_Riley,_

_It’s Sammy’s birthday again. Two now. She’s a handful, got all your craziness and loud laugh. She laughs a lot. I’ll tell her about you again tonight. Like last year. She and Rachel are doing well. _

_I miss you more than I can say, brother. I wish I’d told you just how much you helped me. I only hope you are somehow reading this over my shoulder like you always did, and know it now. _

_I heard Brandon playing your guitar this morning when I woke up. I think he’s been having trouble sleeping lately. He’s not the only one. Remember how we used to lie awake back in basic, talking about girls and cars and guns? Thought we were on top of the world. _

_He sounded good. I knew the song he was playing, but can’t remember the name. That one you used to sing sometimes when you were watching the sun rise. _

_I’m starting my counselling courses next month. Don’t know how I’ll be, sitting down to class work again. It’s only four days a week to start; I’m still working with Byron building houses part time. _

_I always swore I’d never talk about stupid stuff like the weather, but I have to say this morning is beautiful. Flowers are all blooming, leaves coming out on the trees, sky so blue it hurts. Your favorite kind of Texas day. The yellow roses, those wild ones you always liked, that I helped Rachel plant two years ago, are almost all open. I keep looking up and thinking I see you smiling._

_Most days I don’t know if we’re gonna be okay. Some days I think maybe. _

_I’ll always love you, my brother._

_Sam_

Sam Wilson bit his lip, and clicked the button on his pen, before tucking it into his shirt pocket. He tore the sheet he’d filled off the pad of paper, which he slipped into his backpack. Still sitting cross legged in front of the light grey headstone, he held the paper gently, read it once more.

Ri had always read over his shoulder whenever Sam wrote home. “No secrets in this army, pardner,” he laughed.

Sam lifted his head, ran his eyes over the chiseled letters:

**Riley K. Smith **  
**Airman First-Class, USAF**  
**December 11, 1980 – October 20, 2010**  
**Loved forever, forgotten never.**

** _These things we do…_ **

_…that others may live._ Sam’s lips silently formed the words of the other half of the para-rescue motto.

He folded the paper in his hands, kissed it, and laid his letter in front of the stone. He pulled a single beer bottle out of his backpack, opened it, lifted it in a toast.

“See ya round, pardner,” he whispered.

He only ever drank half the bottle. He placed the cap loosely back on top, and set it on top of his letter. A bird launched into song in a nearby oak, and Sam released a long sigh.

He stood, stepped back, and saluted.

Then slung the backpack over his shoulder and crossed the cemetery to the truck. Riley’s truck, which Rachel always made him borrow on visits to Texas.

He climbed into that familiar cab, ditched the pack on the passenger floor. Turned the key.

He sat a moment, listening to the engine running. He hit the power on the radio, before he could chicken out.

_“…glad I didn’t know_

_The way it all would end, the way it all would go_

_Our lives are better left to chance_

_I could have missed the pain_

_But I’d have had to miss the dance…”_

It had been months since Sam last cried. But he did now. Sitting in his friend’s truck, with a country song on the radio, and the smell of roses on the breeze.

**Author's Note:**

> 'The Dance' by Garth Brooks 
> 
> Thanks for reading.  
Kudos+comments always appreciated. :)


End file.
